Outpost

By W. Michael Gear

New York Times–bestselling author: An “intriguing and inventive” sci-fi thriller series set on an alien planet—where corporate threats and dangerous creatures run amok (C. J. Cherryh, Hugo Award-winning author)

“Fans of epic space opera . . . will happily lose themselves in Donovan’s orbit.” —Booklist

Donovan is a world of remarkable wealth that comes at a high price.

When Supervisor Kalico Aguila’s ship arrives, she discovers a failing colony, its government overthrown, the few remaining colonists gone wild. Donovan could make her career—or kill her.

Planetside, Talina Perez is one of three rulers of the Port Authority colony—the only law in the one remaining town. With the Corporate ship demanding answers about the things she’s done, Perez could lose everything, including her life.

For Dan Wirth, Donovan is a last chance. A psychopath with a death sentence looming over his head, he will make a desperate play for power. No matter who he has to corrupt, murder, or destroy.

Captain Max Taggart is the Corporation’s enforcer. But is it too late to seize control of Donovan?

Then a ghost ship, the Freelander, appears in orbit. Missing for two years, she arrives with a crew dead of old age, and reeks of a bizarre death-cult ritual that deters any ship from attempting a return journey. But maybe it’s worth the risk, for a brutal killer is stalking all of them as Donovan plays its own complex and deadly game.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DAW
• Release date: Feb 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9780756413392

W. Michael Gear

W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear are the New York Times bestselling authors of Coming of the Storm, Fire the Sky, and A Searing Wind in the Contact: Battle for America series, as well as more than fifty international bestsellers. In addition to writing both fiction and nonfiction together and separately, the Gears operate an anthropological research company, Wind River Archaeological Consultants, and raise buffalo on their ranch in northern Wyoming. Visit their informative website and read their blog at Gear-Gear.com.

Book preview

1

A strange mythology has grown about morning; it has sent its roots to twine inextricable rhizomes through the human psyche. Like all mythology, it is mostly falsehood. According to the myth, with the rising of the sun hope is kindled in the human spirit. The body rises refreshed, vigorous. The brain is audacious. Keen again. The profound and dark despair of the predawn soul has been vanquished by those golden bars of light which bathe a reborn world . . . or so the myth would claim.

Morning has another and more pragmatic reputation: the time of attack, of unexpected death intruding rudely and impudently into dawn’s domain. In contrast, that ancient reality is all the more gruesome. It is said among observers—at least among those of a sensitive nature—that the horrible irony and tragedy of dying at first light is reflected in the expressions of the newly dead. Only then has the mythology played its final deception.

—SHIG MOSADEK, DONOVAN PORT AUTHORITY, 2153

An exhausted Talina Perez watched the sunrise on Donovan. They still called it sunrise, even if the sun was officially named Capella and lay some thirty light-years from Earth. This particular morning began as a brilliant spear of light behind the craggy black silhouette of the Blood Mountains. Donovan rotated in the same direction as Earth, so sunrise remained in the east.

Aching with fatigue and possessed of a pervading sense of futility, Talina would have preferred to be back at Port Authority. She would have awakened this morning, rested and energized from a full night’s sleep. Instead she stank of sweat, her feet and legs spotted with dried mud, her overalls filthy and smudged. Her skin stung from thorn punctures that she hadn’t been able to avoid in the darkness.

As the first light spilled through the distant gap, she desperately wanted to believe the morning myth, to lower her guard and yawn. Maybe let her mind wander.

Except that she’d seen too many sunrises play across the rictus on a freshly dead man’s face.

Donovan did that, destroyed illusion with brutal regularity.

As the dawn brightened, its light softened the angles and contours of the canyon—sifted shadow and form from the darkness.

She crouched on a precarious trail, body tense, the heavy rifle tightly gripped in her slim and tanned fingers. Her dark eyes shifted constantly, desperately searching the shadows. The charge was almost depleted in her thermal scope. Overhead, two of the drones scoured the canyon sides, the hiss of their fans barely audible.

Capella’s first rays caressed her face, warming her high cheeks and straight nose as they gave a golden cast to her bronzed skin. They illuminated her ancestral features of Spanish hidalgo mixed with classic Maya. Descended from sun gods and conquistadors, their spirit flashed in her sable eyes as she stalked the wild and rocky trails of another world.

Talina Perez hunted a killer.

She pursed her full lips and brushed back a strand of black hair where it had come loose from her long braid. Hair that adopted a bluish raven tint in the full morning light.

Warm air drifted down the canyon, carrying the odor of dry dirt and the cloying scent of musk bushes. The silence seemed to intensify as Capella’s light accented the parched surface of cracked and tumbled stone with pale lavender; high above, it bathed the shredded cirrus clouds in purple and orange streaks where they stretched across the northern sky.

Invertebrates whizzed and chirred in the tangles of brush beneath the sandstone outcrops. To her right the canyon dropped away to a stone-and-sand-choked streambed some twenty meters below.

She swallowed nervously and snugged the rifle butt into her shoulder. Her gaze searched the cap rock above for any irregularity. Then she turned her attention to the narrowing gap where the trail climbed the canyon wall and emptied out onto the flat tableland above. Dotted with aquajade trees and ferngrass, the plain extended to the distant Wind Mountains where they rose some twenty kilometers beyond.

Where the hell are you? she whispered.

She tried to still her pounding heart in order to hear even the faintest sound. Changing her focus, she gave careful scrutiny to the ground, looking for scuffed soil, a displaced rock, a broken thorn, or a bruised leaf on one of the plants.

Because of a dead battery in a motion sensor, the quetzal had come undetected in the night, crossed the defensive ditch, unhooked the gate latch, and slipped into town. That was the thing about quetzals, they were intelligent. Learned from their mistakes. This one obviously had previous experience with humans and knew the defenses. After the creature made its kill, it had known how to escape, charging headlong for the uplands. That was another thing about quetzals: for short distances they could run faster than an aircar.

The planet hosted an endless variety of different and deadly beasts. Bems, though solitary and slow, relied on extraordinary camouflage and deadly claws to capture prey. The creature they called the nightmare inhabited the tropical jungle stretches just south of Port Authority. Also a master of camouflage, it mimicked the surrounding vegetation and invoked a special kind of horror: it first impaled and then devoured victims from the inside out. Fortunately nightmares almost exclusively lurked in mundo trees down south. Smaller threats like the slugs, spikes, and semisentient stinging, poisonous, and predatory plants filled out most of the rest of the known dangerous flora and fauna.

Talina? You on the trail? Allenovich’s voice came through her earpiece.

She shifted her rifle, eyes still on the thornbushes as they rotated their branches to expose night-weary leaves to the rising sun. I’m maybe three hundred meters from the head of the canyon.

"Still got tracks?"

Talina filled her lungs, hating the way her heart was hammering at her breastbone. No. They vanished about fifty meters back.

"Shit." A pause. You watch your ass.

Yeah, she whispered and wished for a drink of water.

Trish here. I’m on the rim just across the canyon from you, Tal. Iji says the drones are reporting that nothing broke out onto the flat up ahead. It’ll take a while to recall them. I’m scanning the canyon with the IR. With the morning sun, that slope you’re on is a patchwork of heat signatures. You sure it’s there?

Yep. She swallowed hard, the rifle up, her pulse racing. I can almost . . .

A trickle of dirt broke loose to cascade from above.

Talina dropped to one knee, the rifle lifted for a snap shot as she stared through the optic.

What?

Where?

The buzzing of the invertebrates changed; the chime shifted as if a whole section of them had gone quiet. Odd, that.

A pebble clicked and bounced down through the rocks and into the scrubby thorn brush above. Quetzal? Or just the morning sun expanding the eroded soil?

Damn, I hate this!

Her muscles remained bunched like knotted wire. Something about the invertebrates . . .

Trish? she barely whispered. See anything above me?

Why the hell couldn’t humans have eyes in the backs of their heads?

The morning air had grown heavy, oppressive.

Can’t make out anything definitive, Tal. Be damned careful. We don’t want to bury you, too.

Affirmative on that.

The quetzal had prowled the town, tracks indicating where it had avoided adults—aware of their weapons—and skirted the lighted areas. Sticking to the shadows and back ways, it had made its way to the personal quarters, stopping only long enough to peer into the domes and try the doors.

At Allison Chomko’s it had found safe prey, had watched her leave her house on an errand. Then the creature had raised the unlocked latch before entering to make its kill. It had escaped, gone before anyone knew.

A running quetzal made an incredible sight with its flared collar membranes spread for thermal regulation. Its mouth gaped wide to expose serrated jaws, which acted as a sort of ram-air intake. Pushed into three separate lungs, oxygen supercharged the blood. As air was channeled through the body core, it picked up heat and was exhaled, or vented, above the powerful legs and along the tail. All six meters of the animal would turn blaze-white for better radiation. A quetzal running in panic across flat terrain could hit one hundred and sixty kph for short periods of time.

But it came at an incredible cost in energy; and here, in the canyon, it had gone to ground. By now it would have digested the infant girl it had taken from Allison Chomko’s cradle. Before it could run again, it had to eat, to replace those depleted resources.

Talina could sense the quetzal’s hunger, sense the creature’s three shining black eyes as they studied her. As if the gaze were somehow radiant.

The invertebrates began another chime—like a mutual wave of sound that passed from critter to critter. Talina was barely aware as it rolled slowly up from the canyon’s mouth.

The fine hair on the nape of her neck rose.

How can a creature that big turn invisible?

But that was the way of so many of Donovan’s creatures: masters of camouflage, all of them.

Arguments raged in Inga’s tavern. Were quetzals—in their way—as smart as humans? They hunted with uncanny ability, manipulated locks, doors, and tools—but made none of their own. Here, in the canyon, the predator’s cunning permeated the very air. A metaphysical odor borne on the currents of the soul.

One small slip, Talina. That’s all it takes. Stay crisp—or you’ll die here.

Talina took another step, senses at high pitch. People had stepped on quetzals before, oblivious to their presence until that shift of slippery flesh beneath a misplaced foot. For their part, the creatures had learned that a human could be efficiently eliminated by a strike to the head, chest, or neck. All it took was a pistonlike blow from one of their clawed, three-toed feet.

Nerve sweat trickled down Talina’s cheek. Capella was a full hand-width above the horizon now, its heat beginning to radiate on the canyon wall. The chirring of the invertebrates swelled, covering any sound—as if the bugs were cheering the quetzal on.

Let it go! Just back away!

But she couldn’t. This one was too cunning a killer. It would be back. Smarter. Faster. More deadly.

The air pulsed with chime, beating a rhythm that was echoed by the land. Thorncactus reached out with a tentative branch, its spines scratching along her boot’s protective leather.

Talina flinched, wheeled, rifle up as she stared at the trail behind her. Empty.

If the thing would just move, the drones would detect it, give her that moment of warning. But for the drones they’d never have tracked the beast this far.

Another swelling of sound rolled up the canyon as the invertebrates song-shared. The chime passed her, heading for the head of the canyon.

Yes! There! A break in the wall of sound—a dead spot of uncharacteristic silence just off to the left—slightly above the trail and not more than ten paces away.

She fixed on it, lowered her cheek to the stock and squinted through the optic. The soil began to flow. A plant seemed to thin, as if reality had turned sideways. A shadow formed in dislodged dirt. Three black eyes emerged from behind mottled, soil-toned lids.

The moment their gazes fixed, they might have shared souls, touched each other’s deadly essences.

Talina shot as the quetzal leaped. Explosive-tipped bullets ripped into the rock and brush that surrounded the three eyes that seemed to rise before her.

She reeled back. Lost her footing and hit hard on the uneven stones. Somehow she kept her hold on the rifle, brought it up.

The quetzal’s camouflaged colors darkened as the creature landed, bunched, and launched itself.

Talina had a momentary image of its wide mouth, the wickedly serrated teeth. Then it blocked the sky as it hurtled toward her.

She was screaming as she held the trigger back. The rifle thundered as she kicked sideways, flung herself downhill off the trail. The quetzal slammed hard feet into the spot where she’d been, one claw cutting her sleeve.

The world spun as Talina tumbled down the slope, tore through the vegetation, bounced off rocks. She slammed onto a weather-rotten outcrop; sandstone crumbled under her weight. The side of her head hit a rock. Lightning and pain blasted through her skull. Her body bounced, landed on loose scree, slid, and broke through a young aquajade tree.

Suddenly she was weightless, falling. The creek bottom stopped her cold, the impact smacked both breath and sense out of her.

Stunned, vision blurred, she came to. Shocked nerves jangled in her limbs. Synapses overloaded and screamed. She tried to move—and gasped. Pain, like fire, burned through her body.

What the hell? Where am I? What the fuck happened?

Accident.

Yes, I know this feeling.

The distant bang of a rifle bored past the ringing in her ears.

Who’s shooting?

Panic caused her to reach out, slap a torn and bleeding hand on a large rock. She was in a canyon bottom.

An image burst into her stumbling brain: quetzal. Baby killer.

Hunting me, she whispered as she reached up to wipe at her eyes—and couldn’t, given the long thorns sticking out of her hand.

Dirt and rocks came cascading from somewhere above. A bullet exploded on stone, followed by the crack of a rifle.

Trish!

Talina whimpered as she pulled herself upright and struggled to see through her swimming eyes. Branches snapped above. Pretty clumsy work on the quetzal’s part.

Clumsy? Why?

Another bullet popped as it exploded above the cut bank no more than three meters above her.

Talina tried to stand. The numb burning in her leg changed to a white-hot and searing pain that speared through her fumbling brain. She managed to focus on her oddly twisted leg. Broken!

The quetzal slipped sideways above her as another of Trish’s bullets exploded in the dirt where the creature had been but an instant before. Then it dropped over the edge, feet thudding into the streambed a couple of meters from Talina’s boots.

The quetzal gleamed, skin shining, reflecting streaks of black and yellow with the legs mottling into blackened umber on those deadly three-toed feet. Behind the creature’s elongated head, the neck expanded; the flaring collar burst into crimson glory.

Talina’s hand—heedless of the thorns—slapped for her holstered pistol. To her horror, the holster was empty, the pistol lost during the tumble down the slope.

The quetzal fixed her with its three black and gleaming eyes. The beast wobbled as if hurt. Took a step, then another.

The quetzal uttered an eerie moan as it raised itself sluggishly. Less than a meter separated her from the three vitreous eyes. The creature blasted out a trilling whistle mixed with a hiss of rage. Crystal drops of moisture caught the light in diamond sparkles where they beaded on the razor-ranks of teeth.

So, you’re taking as many with you as you can, Talina told it, dazzled by the glow behind those angry eyes. And in that instant, she could sense the alien intelligence behind that stare.

Not that I blame you.

The quetzal replied with a clicking down in its iridescent throat, as if in agreement.

Why the hell hadn’t Trish taken the final shot? What was keeping . . . Of course, this far down into the narrow-walled canyon, Trish didn’t have a shot. Couldn’t see the target.

Sorry, pal. Talina granted the beast a weary smile. Blood was running down the side of her head.

The beast kept wobbling on its feet, mortally wounded. Gaze still fixed on hers, it tilted its head, as though in an effort to understand. It gestured with one of the wickedly clawed forefeet, as if demanding something of her. She could almost feel the bottled emotion as the beast whipped its tongue out between the elongated jaws.

She screamed as it made one final leap.

2

Dirt and rocks exploded under Trish Monagan’s heels as she sought to slow her frantic descent down the rocky slope. Each time she leaped she tried to land on the shadowed side of the thorncactus, knowing that the vicious spines would be pointed toward the morning sun. Moving fast like she was, the plants didn’t have time to swing their spines in her direction.

Talina was down there with a quetzal, just out of sight over the lip of the drainage. And, damn it, Trish worshipped that woman. She would do anything for Talina.

The moment the beast had leaped down out of sight, Trish had launched herself, calling, Step! Talina’s down!

Yeah, I saw. On the way!

Talina Perez was a living legend. A woman tougher than duraplast tempered with ceramic, a hard-fisted, undaunted, scrapping survivor.

Please, God, tell me she’s all right.

What if Trish crested that lip to find Talina halfway down a quetzal’s throat? What then?

Kill the fart-sucking quetzal! she growled, using her rifle for balance as she skipped sideways and back-heeled down a loose fan of colluvium. She dared to slap the trunk of an aquajade tree to keep upright, then leaped from a crumbling sandstone outcrop. Knees bent to take the impact, she slowed, hopped from boulder to boulder, and, as the ground leveled, charged forward at a run. The tremolo of the invertebrates went silent as she passed. The thorncactus and claw shrubs began keening from broken branches in the wake of her passage.

On trembling legs, Trish dashed up to the lip of the drainage, flipped her auburn hair out of the way, and looked over.

For a couple of heartbeats it didn’t register. The quetzal lay curled in the narrow confines of the streambed, its hide glowing all the colors of the rainbow. More actually—but the human eye couldn’t see the infrared and ultraviolet.

A broken Talina Perez lay tucked inside the quetzal’s protective curve, unmoving and cuddled as if she were a precious infant. Blood covered Tal’s face and matted in her hair. Her left leg stuck out at an incongruous angle. Worse, the quetzal’s wedge-like head lay against Talina’s, its blood mingling with hers, the creature’s tongue against Talina’s lips. The three eyes seemingly had fixed on Talina’s.

Ah, shit, Trish whispered, her heart suddenly leaden in her breast.

What’s up? Iji asked through her com system.

It’s Talina! Trish dropped to her knee and raised her rifle, trying to stabilize it as she panted for breath. Through the optic she studied the quetzal’s head, wondering if the thing were still alive. As close as its massive head was to Talina’s, she didn’t dare use an explosive round.

Pressing the magazine blocking lever, she cycled the bolt and ejected the explosive-tipped round. From her belt, she fished out an armor-piercing cartridge. Slipping it into the chamber, she slapped the bolt home before sighting through the optic.

As the dot fixed on the beast’s neck just behind the head, Trish shot, saw the creature’s head jerk at the impact.

Dead all right.

Oh, Tal, she muttered as she stood, made her way to a break in the steep gully side, and slid down to the streambed.

She approached, rifle up, her finger hovering over the trigger. A person just didn’t take chances with quetzals.

Trish could see the quetzal’s torn flesh—the broken bone and shattered cerebral tissue. It still took all of her courage to step over the creature’s tail, straddle the thick body, and kick the tongue away from Talina’s mouth. Only then did she reach down for Talina’s torn hand.

Talina?

No response.

Switching her grip to the woman’s wrist, a strong pulse beat there.

She’s alive! We need to medevac!

We’ll have the aircar there in minutes, Stepan replied.

It took all of Trish’s strength to pull Talina free of the dead quetzal’s coils and ease her over the creature’s corpse—especially given Talina’s broken leg. Kicking some rocks out of the way, Trish laid her out on the sandy streambed and began checking her vitals. Respiration slow but steady. From her belt pack, Trish took a gauze pad and wiped away as much of the combined blood and gore as she could, then used a quick tie to put pressure on Tal’s bleeding head wound.

The sound of rolling rock and cascading sand above made her reach for her rifle. Then Iji appeared on the terrace lip.

How is she?

Unconscious. Took a blow to the head. Broken leg.

Be right down, Trish.

Iji began working his way down the drainage in search of an easier means of descent.

Trish turned her attention to splinting Talina’s leg, finding two rather cumbersome pieces of jadewood and using the last of her quick ties.

She was pulling thorns out of Talina’s hand when the woman gasped and blinked her eyes open. For a moment they stared—wide and disoriented. Struggled to focus, and finally fixed. Trish?

Glad to see that you’re back with the living. Stepan’s called for the aircar. It’s picking up the drones. We’ll get you out of here.

But I was . . . Talina clamped her eyes shut for a moment. The quetzal and I . . . She swallowed hard.

What? Trish propped her elbows on her knees.

Talina shook her head. Man, that can’t be. It’s like I was inside its mind. Seeing myself. Weird. Like it admired me.

Hey, you took a pretty good knock to the head.

Talina’s uneasy gaze fixed on the quetzal. No. All this happened at the end. Like we were dying together. And then . . . and then I was in its head when it exploded. Talina shivered. That was really rude, let me tell you.

Trish lifted a skeptical eyebrow. Concussion. Had to be. Raya would know what to do. Probably meant that Talina wasn’t getting out of the clinic for a while.

How we doing? Iji called as he came trotting up the rocky streambed, his rifle at the ready.

She’s conscious. Broken leg.

Broken leg? Talina asked, shifted, only to cry out and stare at her splinted leg. Shit! There’s three weeks in Raya’s damn hospital while I chew up Cheng’s homemade aspirin like it was candy.

Who knows? Maybe the supply ship will finally show up with a load of real med.

Yeah, Trish. Dream on.

The whirr of the aircar descended, dust billowing out as it landed on the terrace flat above. Trish slitted her eyes, bending over Talina to shield her from the deluge of falling grit.

How we going to get her out of here? Iji scanned the steep sides of the drainage.

Rig a pelvic sling, Talina told him. "Clip it to my belt. Tie that off to a rope and attach the rope to the cargo hook on the aircar’s bottom. Step lifts me straight out of here. Flies out of the canyon, where he hopefully lowers me gently to the ground. I can crawl inside for the trip back."

That’s going to hurt like . . . like . . .

Yeah. Um . . . There’s probably no words to describe it, huh? Talina gave him her old evil grin. Beats spending the rest of my life down here with a rotting quetzal, don’t you think? And saves you and Trish the onerous job of packing me out of here on a litter.

That’s my tough lady, Trish said admiringly.

Talina was staring thoughtfully at the quetzal. Came pretty damn close, didn’t you?

The quetzal’s eyes had begun to gray where they peered out of the shattered skull.

From above, Stepan called out, Talina? You all right?

Nothing thirty hours of sleep and a shot of Inga’s whiskey won’t cure.

A wry humor filled his voice. Well, if you can survive that stomach rot, you can survive any old quetzal. What happened? Trish lost her touch? Thought she could shoot a fly off a wall at twenty klicks?

She tagged it a couple of times. So did I. Just didn’t put it down.

Iji was inspecting the quetzal. "I can see eight hits. Might be the bullets going bad. Impact primers deteriorate with age. God knows how old that stuff was before The Corporation got their hands on it. And you know they bought it at bottom dollar. Figure another year in storage, then two years to get it here. And it’s been what? Six years since the last supply ship? Hell, yeah. The damn ammo’s going bad."

He pulled his long knife from its sheath and waggled the blade for emphasis. What do you want to bet that if they ever do send another supply ship, there’s no ammunition on it?

And if there is—Trish laughed bitterly—want to bet it won’t chamber in our guns?

Talina—eyes glazed with pain—used the falsetto voice that everyone on Donovan attributed to The Corporation: Ammunition? What on Earth would you possibly need ammunition for? It’s not like you’re at war. We cannot process silly, frivolous, and spurious requests. We have shipping limitations. Profit margins. Every kilo of cargo must be absolutely necessary for the long-term success of the Donovan project.

One more fucking thing we’ve got to figure out. Trish muttered to herself as she caught the pelvic sling Allenovich tossed down from the aircar. Now we’re going to have to see if we can’t suss out how to make our own ammo.

Talina made a pained face, breath catching as if something really hurt, and managed to say, They can damn well come here and see how long they can last without ammunition. A pause. Of course there’s no guarantee that a quetzal would stoop to eating something as slimy as a Corporation Boardmember. She shot a peculiarly thoughtful look at the dead quetzal. Quetzals have pride, you know.

Trish studied her as she knotted the rope on the pelvic sling ring. What the hell are you talking about, Talina? They’re fucking beasts!

Wonder what the chemistry is for the explosive? Iji asked himself as he dragged the quetzal’s tail straight and began slitting his way up the ventral hide. Rainbows of color spread out like a wake as the knife sliced through the skin.

Cheng will know. Trish gave the rope a hard tug, ensuring that Stepan had tied it off securely. The supply ship’s six years overdue. Sometimes I forget there’s any place in the universe besides Donovan. Like all the talk of Earth, Transluna, and Mars . . . well, they’re dreams, you know? Fantasies that never really were.

Yeah. Iji looked up from where he sliced open the belly, his round face thoughtful beneath his mop of black shaggy hair. I’ve heard more than one person say that we’re all that’s left. That something happened back on Earth. Some disaster. No more ships. Ever. We’re it. The last of humankind.

Trish shaded her eyes. Capella’s harsh light beat down on the yellow-bedded cap rock above the sloping canyon walls. The scrubby aquajade trees gleamed like turquoise dewdrops, the thorncactus and varieties of what they called sucking shrub were now verdant green as their photosynthesis kicked into high gear. One thing a person couldn’t deny about Donovan: It was always colorful.

This was Trish’s world. Her parents had arrived with the second ship. She’d been born here nineteen Donovanian years ago, making her first generation. Solar System? It was an abstract. A place she’d never seen.

You’re talking bullshit, Iji. Talina gritted the words through pain-clamped jaws. Travel’s risky. Maybe they finally found out what makes ships fail and disappear. Maybe, until they fix the symmetry inversion, no one will take the chance to space for someplace as far away as Donovan. Lose too many ships and those chickenshit assholes will write off the whole colony—and everyone here—as a bad investment.

Iji used his shoulder to prop up one of the powerful back legs as he slit the hide beneath. He might have been working with a blanket of liquid iridescent color as the tiny scales caught and refracted the light in laser-rich brilliance.

He said, We’re the settlement farthest out. I’ve read my history as well as my botany texts. The far frontier is the hardest place to hold. The easiest to forget.

They’ll be back, Trish promised. Not because she believed it, but for Talina’s sake. The woman’s head had dropped onto her chest, eyes clamped shut, breathing labored.

Trish had been six when her geologist father had vanished in the forests to the south. She’d been twelve when a gotcha vine killed her botanist mother. Talina had sort of taken Trish under her wing. Treated her more like a younger sister than an orphan. Saw her through all the shit a teenage girl could get into. Not that there was much to get into in Port Authority. And Trish came from a small circle of friends. A grand total of five who’d been in that initial first generation. Made her a sort of snob. Two boys, two other girls, they’d married, already had kids of their own on the way.

I always was the odd one out.

Iji peeled the hide back, running his knife through the connective tissue and nerve fibers to expose the curious arrangement of gray-blue guts that packed the chest cavity like swollen bladders. Swinging the heavy knife like a sword, Iji chopped through the quetzal’s equivalent of ribs—though they weren’t bones in the Earthly sense. These were a polymer compound instead of terrestrial calcium and collagen.

The biology on Donovan was fundamentally different from that on Earth, but the colonists used the old terms for the analogous life-forms and structures. Cutting the slab of tissue free, Iji set it aside, exposing one of the three elongated lungs and the interlaced, kidney-red energy net—a weblike organ that stored oxygen then mixed it with hydrocarbons to provide the chemical energy that enabled a quetzal’s tremendous bursts of speed.

He was used up, Iji noted, pointing his blade at the depleted organ. Whereas Trish had seen the strands so swollen and engorged they almost filled the gut, the strands here were more like fishnet.

With a flourish, Iji sliced out the section, carefully cut out a bulge in the light brown digestive pouch, and lifted it out.

Laying it on the sandy gravel, he hesitated, then slit the organ carefully down its length. Digestive juices dribbled out as he pulled the stomach open with the knife tip. A few bits of acid-eroded bone—no longer recognizable as human—were all that remained of Allison Chomko’s baby girl. Something, at least, for Allison to bury.

Trish bent down, grunting as she lifted Talina’s weight in order to slide the pelvic sling under her hips. Then she drew the strap between the woman’s legs. She was buckling the belt when she glanced up. Talina? You’re as white a Corporation lawyer’s ass. You look like you’re about to . . .

Talina’s eyes flickered as they lost focus; her head lolled loosely forward, and she slumped on the sand.

Shit!

What’s wrong? Stepan called from above.

Talina’s out. Cold. Maybe she’s hurt worse than we think. As she spoke, she was tying a loop in the rope. Step! We’re going! Now!

What about Iji?

Looking up from the quetzal, Iji gestured with the knife. Get her out of here. I’ve got my weapons along with Talina’s rifle and pistol. Just you damn well be back to get me and this hide before dark. Big hide like this? It’s worth a fortune.

But leaving you—

Go! Iji bellowed. "Hell, if luck smiles, I’ll have two quetzals skinned by the time you get back!"

Trish keyed her throat mic. Step, I mean it. Talina’s not doing well. I’ve got a loop for my foot, and I can keep a grip on the rope and make sure Tal doesn’t fall out of the harness. Now fly our asses out of here! She’s not dying on my watch. That’s an order.

Yeah, yeah. But I don’t like it. Step called down before he vanished back toward the aircar.

Iji! You stay damned frosty, you hear me? I’ll have Step on his way back for you the moment we’re offloaded at hospital.

Iji was grinning, hiding what was obviously worry. No one liked being left alone on Donovan. Especially with a freshly dead quetzal corpse to draw every predator in the countryside down on top of him.

As the aircar spun up, dirt, grit, sand, and small gravel blew out over the gully’s edge in a blinding shower.

It took all of Trish’s might to get an arm around Talina’s shoulder. The slack went out of the rope, almost jerking her loose. Holding on for dear life, she felt herself lift. The loop tightened painfully around her foot as it took her full weight.

Careful, Step! she bellowed in the downdraft as she and Talina swung against the rock-filled side of the drainage.

Then they were up, rising, the narrow drainage bottom dropping away as Step sought altitude.

Panting, scared half out of her wits, Trish kept a death grip on the rope—why the hell hadn’t she taken time to put on gloves? Her other arm hugged Talina’s limp body to her.

The Corporation left us here. Soft-coddled bastards never know what it means to fight. To bury the few bits of bone that remain from your only child. Or your lover.

Heart hammering with fear, she kept her eyes closed, ignoring the pain where the loop cut into her foot and where the rope was eating the skin off the palm of her hand.

3

Images drifted through Talina’s imagination. Ill-formed and misty.

Dirt, gritty and clinging, coated her hands as she stood in the open grave. She had insisted that she be the one—along with Stepan—who reached over and got a hold on Mitch’s shroud. Stiff and resisting, the canvas fought her as she tried to wrap her fingers around it and get a grip. The way Talina lived it was as fresh as yesterday.

Her gut tightened as she strained, half dragged Mitch’s corpse from where it rested at the lip of the grave. He was so cold. Limp. His body sagged as she took his weight and lowered it to the red soil on the bottom of the grave. For a moment she just stood there, his shrouded head between her feet.

Is that all there is? The end of love? The end of life?

Dully, she’d become aware of the voices asking if she were all right.

Hell no.

But some inner strength had caused her to bite off her grief, to reach up and take the offered hand. To help them as they pulled her from the grave. Then she had glanced up at Donovan’s memorial at the top of the cemetery. After a second spent staring at the stone monument, Talina stepped over and laid hands on the shovel; she’d driven the blade into the loose dirt. Shoulders working, breath coming in gasps, she’d tossed the rocky soil onto Mitch’s corpse.

"I buried my lover. Not like a nice sanitized funeral back home. Here we have to shovel the dirt ourselves." Her voice seemed to echo in the curious stillness, and then fade slowly into nothing.

She blinked, coming awake. It took a moment for her vision to clear. Her throat was dry, her body aching. As her focus returned, she stared up at a ceiling. To either side the medical equipment blinked at her in an old and familiar way.

She filled her lungs. Started to exhale a hiss. And caught herself.

Hiss?

What kind of insanity was that?

Talina forced her brain to concentrate. Hospital. I’m in hospital. What the hell happened this time?

She ordered her thoughts, remembering the quetzal. How it had attacked, her tumble down the steep slope. Staring into the beast’s eyes as if sharing its soul . . .

Did the damn things even have souls?

God, I’m messed up, she whispered to herself, images of burying Mitch once again spinning up from her memory. Was that cold corpse really the same warm man she’d cherished? The lover whose eyes she’d stared into? Laughed with? Who’d held her as she cried? Shared her longings and dreams? That she’d wrapped herself around as he shuddered in orgasm? The man she had tried to press into her very soul?

The man I couldn’t save.

It would have been so simple back in Solar System.

She imagined a Boardmember, resplendent in his silk suit. The genuine article, not a synthetic. A smiling man, clean-shaven, with white and perfect teeth. His hands were pale, soft, perfectly manicured, the skin thin and translucent. Without scars or calluses. Perfect health—monitored by the finest physicians—could be seen in his stride, in his perfectly proportioned body with its interactive genetic and metabolic feedback in constant balance. She could see his dissociated smile as Corporate data rolled through his implants, scrolling the abstract mathematics of profit and loss through his brain.

That suit that would have been worth five rifles and eight thousand rounds of ammunition. A day’s salary enough to have paid for an electric fence and enough parts to keep it from failing. A week’s earnings enough to have supplied the entire perimeter of Port Authority with motion detectors.

In her imagination he gave her a helpless look—eyes impotent and tender—and shrugged slightly. With a wistful smile he lifted his delicate, almost translucent hands, spreading them in apology.

And we have to depend upon the likes of him?

People are dying here. Dying to make money for you assholes.

Her voice rasped, as if from disuse.

It took no effort to remember Mitch’s face as they sewed canvas around it. How his slack features disappeared with each stitch.

If I’d only had an ampoule of megacillin I could have saved him.

Dead. For lack of an inexpensive mass-produced antibiotic that no one had deemed worthy of sending to far-off Donovan, despite its continued requisition.

When she looked up through unfocused eyes, the ceiling shimmered in rainbow patterns. A slight ache tightened in the back of her eyeballs. A quetzal ceiling. As if the creature . . . The shimmering faded, and it seemed as though a thousand stars rained from the sky. As though her body were falling through space, weightless and eternal.

What the . . . ?

It hit her that she remembered the stories. The ones her mother had told when she gave lectures on the ancient Maya. About how the shamans of her people could change into spirit beasts. How the souls of animals could possess them. One of her great aunts—who some called a bruja—had claimed she could turn herself into a giant snake.

It wasn’t coincidence that the first explorers had named the quetzals after the Mayan rainbow-skinned feathered serpent that flew through the night sky and breathed out the spiritual essence of Creation.

Something seemed to move deep inside her, down under her heart and diaphragm. An alien presence that left her frightened and slightly nauseous.

Talina, get a grip on yourself.

A tingle of fear ran through her.

She wondered which of them had actually died that day in the canyon. Talina chuckled dryly. No doubt there were worse forms of madness.

Didn’t matter. If a supply ship from Earth didn’t arrive, quetzals would wander unhindered through the ruins of Port Authority, perhaps wondering if humans had ever been real, or were just a dream.

4

According to Trish Monagan’s bedside clock it was just after three in the morning when Shig’s call had roused her from a deep sleep. She had been dreaming of whipped cream, having had a taste of the delicacy when she was a girl. That had been

Reviews for Outpost

[thegalaxygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent worldbuilding. Gear nailed the difficulties faced by colonists on a marginal and dangerous planet who are forced to rely on themselves. It had a Western flavor, despite the futuristic setting. Lots of plot elements which made the story interesting and complicated, but were also a bit of a distraction. I would have liked more focus and fewer moving parts. Characters were a little bit stereotypical, but still interesting. I would read more in this series.

[lisatimpf · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

W. Michael Gear's imaginative space opera Outpost takes us to Donovan, a planet 30 light-years from Earth, where colonists struggle to eke out a precarious existence.

Gear is the author or co-author (with his wife, Kathleen O'Neal Gear) of over 50 published novels. This experience shines through in Outpost, which contains powerful world-building, compelling characters, and a gripping plot. Released in hardcover format in February 2018 and as a mass market paperback in February 2019, Outpost is the foundational novel in the Donovan series. The series continues with Abandoned (released in hardcover November 2018), Pariah (released in hardcover May, 2019), and Unreconciled (slated to come out in hardcover in May 2020).

Donovan is inhabited by dangerous creatures, including intelligent giant lizards known as quetzals and flying menaces known as "mobbers." Even the plants, which the colonists have dubbed with colorful but aptly descriptive names like chokeya, gotcha vine, and cutthroat flower, are dangerous. It's fortunate that the colonists are able to grow terrestrial food plants, because most of the native flora are indigestible, deadly, or will induce metal-based toxicity.

Humanity's ability to adapt to the harsh conditions on this frontier planet is a testament to the resilience of the human race. Forced by necessity to be inventive, the colonists have survived by combining "a mishmash of eighteenth and twenty-second century technology." (p. 24) While most of the colonists reside in the fenced settlement known as Port Authority, some, referred to as the "Wild Ones," have left that haven to carve out a foothold in the outback, farming or mining. The latter occupation accounts for The Corporation's willingness to invest in such a far-flung colony. For all of its dangers, Donovan also harbors treasure—rare earth elements, precious gems, and gold.

At the start of the novel, the situation for Donovan's colonists is made more difficult by the fact that the promised supply ships have failed to come for the past six years. People are dying due to a lack of basic medical supplies such as antibiotics, and even the ammunition is going bad. The lack of incoming ships causes some to speculate that there has been a catastrophe back on Earth.

Just as many of the colonists have resigned themselves to the idea they may not see another vessel from Earth, the Turalon arrives. Much as they have been waiting for just such an eventuality, the colony's leaders also know The Corporation is unlikely to be pleased with some of the necessary liberties they've taken in the name of survival. As one of the characters notes, "This isn't the same colony The Corporation is expecting to find: fat, ordered, and dutifully following directives in lockstep." (p. 25)

Though Turalon brings much-needed supplies, it also carries a number of new colonists. Since the existing colony had no forewarning of their arrival, they must scramble to arrange food and housing for the newcomers. The colonists must also contend with newly-arrived and highly ambitious Supervisor Kalico Aguila, who quickly becomes embroiled in a conflict with the "Triumvirate," as the informal leaders of the colony are known.

If dealing with the sudden appearance of the Turalon and an unexpected influx of colonists wasn’t enough, another factor complicates the story line. The ship Freelander suddenly appears after being missing for months. Freelander left the solar system six months before the Turalon, but arrives later, bearing macabre artifacts. Evidence that suggests that the ship must have gone into a time warp, during which more than a hundred years have passed.

With all of these elements, Outpost has a lot of moving parts, but Gear weaves the various plot lines deftly together. Our interest in the story is enhanced by Gear's diverse cast of characters. Security Officer Talina Perez, of Spanish and Mayan descent, is the first person introduced in the novel. Described by one of the other characters as "tougher than duraplast tempered with ceramic, a hard-fisted, undaunted, scrapping survivor," (p. 10) Perez is fiercely dedicated to her job of defending her fellow colonists. Also in the mix are the philosophical Shig Mosadek, a former professor of comparative religion, and Yvette Dushane. Talina, Shig, and Yvette form the Triumvirate, the group that rules Donovan with a loose rein until Kalico Aguila's arrival. First-generation Donovian Trish Monagan, the ambitious Corporate-ladder-climbing Aguila, the competent but conflicted Marine Captain Max Taggart, and the conniving and ruthless newly-landed colonist Dan Wirth are among the other key characters.

World-building is one of Outpost's strengths. Gear's descriptions are immersive, and plunge us into the story. At the outset of the novel, Gear describes what Talina experiences as she hunts down a renegade quetzal: (p. 2)

Warm air drifted down the canyon, carrying the odor of dry dirt and the cloying scent of musk bushes. The silence seemed to intensify as Capella's light accented the parched surface of cracked and tumbled stone with pale lavender; high above, it bathed the shredded cirrus clouds in purple and orange streaks where they stretched across the northern sky.

Throughout the novel, Gear weaves in scents, sounds and tastes as well as visual descriptions.

Beyond exploring the physical setting of the planet, the ship, and the Port Authority, the novel also shows us the social dynamics of a struggling colony, the psychological impact of travelling in the confined space of the Turalon for the almost-two-year voyage, and the impact of the influx of new colonists. The charged atmosphere of the first encounter between the newcomers (dubbed "Skulls" by the Donovians since many of them have shaved their heads for journey aboard the Turalon) and the old-timers is described thus: (87)

They jostled elbow-to-elbow, partly as a refuge from the storm, but mostly because everyone had come to inspect the Skulls and hear the news about home. The whole thing resembled a riot on low boil, the locals shouting questions, the Skulls shouting back about politics, explorations, setbacks, disasters, prices, the economy, what was new in movies, games, and sports. Which actors were big, and who was in power.

Outpost provides food for thought on big-picture philosophical issues as well. Donovan may have its dangers, but it also offers colonists much more freedom than they would experience in the buttoned-down and highly controlled life back in the Solar System. After Kalico makes a reference to Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit, Yvette replies, (p. 383)

Sure, Donovan's dangerous and constantly trying to kill you. But you want to talk Sartre? Hell's back in Solar System with its algorithms, rules and laws, and Corporate control. It's all sterile. Everything dictated, running like a perfect machine. And once you've been turned into a part in the mechanism, that's where you'll spend the rest of your life. Like a little gear in the works. Without hope or opportunity.

Outpost gives us an interesting take on what it would require to survive in a harsh and unforgiving environment—and the human toll such conditions might exact. When the last supply ship left Donovan six years before Turalon's arrival, there were nearly 3,000 colonists. By the time Turalon shows up, there are just under 400 people living in Port Authority, with as many as a couple of hundred additional colonists living in the bush. As Talina notes, " 'On Donovan, stupidity is a death sentence.' " (p. 206) Humans survive by being smart, innovative, and, in some cases, ruthless.

The hardship isn't all on the colonists' side. The Corporation also endures setbacks, and is not impervious to the failure of best-laid plans. The Turalon brings a colonist under contract to serve as a livestock technician, specializing in cattle. Ironically, as a result of the interruption in arrival of supply ships, The Corporation doesn't realize the cattle on Donovan have been dead for eight years. Another new colonist who is a petroleum engineer discovers that the pre-work that was supposed to be completed in order for him to do his job never happened, because the equipment never arrived. Others face similar disappointments. The jobs they were hired for can't be done, and to make things worse, they find that living conditions on Donovan are more primitive than they expected. These setbacks are examples of Gear's ability to offer a realistic look at the kind of things that might not go so well if and when humans venture into space.

I found there was a lot to like about Outpost. The plot drew me forward, and Gear did a masterful job of creating characters with distinct mannerisms, speech, and motivations. However, I found some sections dealing with graphic or disturbing content less enjoyable. This included some of the scenes aboard the Freelander as the Turalon's crew discovers evidence of a death cult, and chapters that gave the reader access to the psychopathic Dan Wirth's thought processes. I wasn't so keen on these darker aspects of the novel. Other readers, depending on their threshold for such things, might not mind these sections.

That issue aside, Outpost has much to offer. With a cast of diverse and interesting characters, a novel world rich in both beauty and danger, and numerous plot twists, Gear has created a page-turner of a tale. All in all, an entertaining, well-written, and thought-provoking read for fans of space opera.

[tldegray-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Donovan is a remote world that thinks it's been abandoned by the Earth corporation that owns it. The corporation doesn't know why all the ships it sent to Donovan never returned but they want to find out and see if there's any more profit to be made. The citizens of Donovan assume they're free, their leaders and law enforcement agree, the corporate representative wants to make her name and her money, the corporate law is no longer sure it's worth it, and a murderer has just landed. Then, one of the missing ships arrives and things get really confusing. This book was fun, tense, and little creepy, just the way I like it. #Outpost #NetGalley